The session focused on two key developments: the government’s new policy enabling contracting authorities to reserve certain below-threshold contracts for local suppliers, and the flexibilities introduced through the Procurement Act 2023.
We were joined by Ciara Campfield from Stone King, and Lisa Wilson, Integrated Director of Commissioning at the Royal Borough of Greenwich, alongside a wide range of practitioners from across the Keep it Local network.
We're sharing key learning from the discussion to support your conversations with system partners and help you make the most of emerging opportunities.
A shift towards local-first commissioning
A central theme was the potential of the new policy allowing below-threshold contracts to be reserved for local suppliers, SMEs, and VCSE organisations
We have openly supported this policy, and now that it has been introduced it represents a significant milestone for the Keep it Local campaign and our wider membership.
Participants saw it as an important step towards more place-based commissioning. It creates space for councils to prioritise organisations rooted in their communities, rather than defaulting to larger national providers with greater bidding capacity. It also reflects evidence that spending locally can have a significant multiplier effect, helping to keep more value circulating within communities.
However, the discussion also highlighted the importance of careful implementation. In some areas, VCSE capacity may need time and investment to grow. Rather than seeing this as a limitation, participants emphasised that it should be a prompt for earlier engagement, collaboration, and long-term sector development.
There was clear agreement that strong pre-market engagement is essential if this policy is to be used effectively in practice.
What we learned: procurement legislation is often more flexible than practice suggests
We have long highlighted the barriers faced by community organisations under traditional commissioning models based on open competition and transactional approaches, rather than the collaborative ways of working that we know deliver better outcomes.
A key takeaway from the session was that many of the barriers experienced in practice are not embedded in procurement legislation itself, but in organisations’ internal policies and processes.
Participants noted that internal council rules are often more restrictive than the Procurement Act requires. This is frequently driven by risk-averse organisational cultures, legacy approaches, and capacity pressures within procurement teams.
The key implication is that, where there is political and organisational will, these barriers can be changed. More collaborative commissioning is not only possible – it is already being delivered in some places within the current legal framework.
There are a range of flexibilities within the Procurement Act 2023 that can support this shift:
- Direct award, where appropriate, such as when there is a single viable provider.
- The Light Touch Regime, enabling more flexible approaches for services such as health, social care, and education.
- The Competitive Flexible Procedure, supporting iterative and innovation-led commissioning.
- Section 32, allowing certain contracts to be reserved for supported employment providers.
These approaches can be most effective when combined with strong relationship-based commissioning, including early co-design, a clear understanding of the local VCSE landscape, proactive engagement, and long-term strategic intent.
Case study: Royal Borough of Greenwich
Lisa Wilson shared how the Royal Borough of Greenwich has been embedding a more collaborative approach through its Cooperative Commission model and Together for Greenwich programme.
This includes developing personalised, locally rooted support models such as community micro-enterprises, direct payments, and personal assistant arrangements. A key principle is starting with what people say they need and designing services – including the procurement process — around those outcomes, rather than fitting needs into pre-existing structures.
Further resources
This discussion reinforced a clear message: the tools for more collaborative, local commissioning already exist, and there is a strong opportunity for system partners to make greater use of them. This includes working more closely with the community sector at the earliest stages to understand local need, and then selecting procurement approaches that best enable collaborative delivery.
We recommend reading the further guidance below for a more detailed overview of the procurement flexibilities and how they may be applied in practice, noting that their use will depend on local commissioning approaches and may vary between authorities:
- Government guidance on reserving below-threshold contracts for local suppliers, SMEs and VCSE organisations.
- Keep it Local Commissioning Guide – Locality’s practical guide to adopting a Keep it Local approach to commissioning, with a focus on working collaboratively with local community organisations.
- Keep it Local Commissioning Guide for Health – practical guide to adopting a Keep it Local approach in the context of commissioning health services.
- Purposeful Collaboration – a practical guide exploring how councils can use the flexibilities within the Procurement Act 2023 to build stronger collaboration with the VCSE sector.